100,000 Europeans lost their jobs in the steel industry because tariffs were not introduced before the pandemic.
Industry & EmploymentEuropean Union
- Error detected
- The claim attributes 100,000 job losses exclusively to the absence of pre-pandemic tariffs, when these losses accumulated over 15+ years due to multiple structural and cyclical factors, not one policy decision.
The claim implies tariffs were absent before the pandemic; in fact, the EU imposed provisional steel safeguards in July 2018 and definitive safeguards in February 2019, both before the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Omissions
- The 100,000 figure refers to cumulative job losses over approximately 15 years (2008–2023/2024), not specifically to the pandemic period or its aftermath. The MEP implies these losses are recent and directly caused by a single policy gap, which is misleading.
- The EU introduced definitive steel safeguard measures in February 2019 (provisional measures from July 2018) — before the pandemic — so the premise that no tariffs existed before the pandemic is factually questionable.
- The claim attributes all 100,000 job losses to the absence of pre-pandemic tariffs, ignoring other major drivers of steel industry decline: Chinese overcapacity and dumping, the 2008 financial crisis, high European energy prices, decarbonisation costs, and structural economic shifts.
- Publication dates for the key Eurofer and IndustriAll sources could not be confirmed precisely, but the data they contain (referring to the period 2008–2023/2024) predates the session date of 2026-05-18.
- The MEP did not cite any source for the 100,000 figure.